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How to upgrade to an SSD on a Sony Vaio VPCSA

I recently saw a sweet deal on the Intel 320 series SSD and decided it was a good time to upgrade to solid state on my Vaio laptop, a VPCSA – which is quite a nice ultrabook, by the way. Boy was it harder than I expected 🙂

The challenges:
1) The Vaio has only 1 internal SATA interface
2) The Vaio has an internal battery and tricky placement of the drive bay
3) The Intel SSD software doesn’t work unless you have the drive directly connected

The solutions:
1) Use an external USB drive (see challenge 3…)
2) Patience
3) I had to use a third party solution to migrate my data connected to the external USB interface

Disassembly is difficult. First, you have to get access to the battery compartment by removing the screws on the front edge of the laptop bottom.

The screws are tiny so you have to be careful when removing them.

Next, with the back off, you must remove the battery. The following image shows the laptop with battery exposed:

The following image shows me removing the battery by pulling the slot tab:

Finally, you have to remove the screws on the drive tray, disconnect the small connector with the “B” on it, then remove the drive tray. The following image shows the laptop with battery removed:

When you remove (or reinsert) the drive, be very careful with the screws. If the tiny screws fall down under the drive tray, you have to completely remove the tray again in order to retrieve the screws. I had to pull the drive at least twice when I did it which is pretty frustrating.

After switching out the drive in the drive tray, perform the same steps in reverse to put the drive back in the PC. You can then boot your machine and migrate the appropriate partitions.

Tough, but worth it! My WEI went up to a 7 for my HD and everything is very snappy.

I am not sure if it voided my warranty when I did the upgrade. I will note that I didn’t break any sort of “don’t tinker” seals when I did it and considering the battery is in the same compartment, it’s probably not enough of a messy thing for Sony to void it, the memory, HDD, and battery should be user servicable, I just don’t know what the specifics are for this PC.

Couple of questions. What do you mean by “Intel SSD software doesn’t work unless you have the drive directly connected” and second is the sata port supports sata 3 or only sata 2?
Thanks for your time.

The Intel SSD transfer software won’t work if you have a 3rd party enclosure, I didn’t notice the HD came with a USB connector…. The sata port is sata3 (the USB port is USB3 too). Some people have mentioned that some of the Sony BIOSes lock the drives to SATA 2 but I’m guessing recent updates have since stopped locking out drives.

Hi,
Just thinking about replacing the stock 120GB SSD that came with my VPCSA (as it’s almost full!) with a OCZ 240GB Vertex Plus. I have never done this type of swap before so really interested in your article. But was looking for some guidance:
1. What software did you use to transfer the data successfully from the old SSD to your new SSD? Was it the intel software?
2. Do you know if the OCZ SSD will come with this software?! I have also purchased Ghost and this has arrived before the SSD!
Cheers Howard

@Howard:
Just in case you didn’t already find out: better forget that. As i understood (it’s explained on the Sony Support Website), Sony did not use a standard SATA port for VPCSA-notebooks which already came with an SSD integrated.

I bought a 256 GiByte SSD and opened the notebook, just to find out that the ports did not match. The one available in the notebook is somewhat smaller at one side, so there seems to be no way of just inserting a bigger SSD.

If anyone has an idea on how to solve this, or someone can just prove me wrong and tell me that this actually _is_ a standard port (as i’m more of a software guy who has no particular idea about hardware and connection-/port-issues), i would be kind of happy.

Addendum: i heard about some drive caddy thingy [1], which can hold a disk (HDD or SSD), so one can actually use two disks. The drawback: it uses the slot of the Blu-Ray, which i probably don’t want to remove. Although one could use it as an external drive using [2], but i did not find any German shop providing these items and i’m not sure about how long (if even possible) delivery from USA would take and how expensive it would be…

I have a similar pc.. the sony store guy told me i could setup 2 ssd in raid0 configuration with a special bay for maximum speed. Do you think this is possible? i am just starting my research into this.. thanks!

@alex – I don’t think there are two HD slots in this particular model, at a minimum there are not two SATA cables, so no RAID-0 🙁 You could do something funky though: use the USB 3.0 or eSATA ports to add more drives, I would not recommend running RAID-0 externally, because if the drives get out of sync – which can happen if your cat, dog, mother, etc, knocks out a cable while your laptop is running – you would lose your data and it would not be recoverable.

Hi,
I have a vaio pc that looks just like yours, mine is vpcsa-3cgx model.
I wonder if there is a way to remove the dvd tray and place an ssd instead.
Is the socket for the dvd tray compatible with the ssd (mSata interface).
The thing is, this approach is possible for some other vaio vpcsa models (sa, sb, …)
so I really wish I can do it with mine.
Thanks anyway, at least I can replace the slow hdd with a new ssd 🙂

I really don’t know if you could replace the cd/dvd drive. However, if I remember correctly, the drive does have USB 3.0 (the blue port) which means that you could easily add an external drive and get decent performance out of it with an SSD enclosure.

This is correct, but you’ll need the appropriate cables and an additional mSATA SSD to get it to work in the single drive bay. Alternatively you can get rid of the optical drive and put in a drive caddy in its stead. Search around the net, it’s not hard to find the correct caddy that’s a 1-screw swap!

Hi there – I’m attempting to upgrade my Sony’s SSD (which happens to be mSATA). Would you be able to provide the part number of the drive cable your notebook uses as well as the drive caddy’s part number? Since my Vaio’s current SSD is mSATA, the parts are not usable for my new SATA SSD.

Unfortunately, I have long since gotten rid of the Vaio. Best luck Russ on your upgrade attempt, I will try and check to see if I have higher resolution photos which might expose the part number but I have a feeling they are lost as well.

Hey mate, I would be very grateful if you can provide or send ANY pictures of this HDD cable to me. Sony is VERY unhelpful and they don’t want to provide this info. I am very dissapointed with their service! I have 1.8″ SSD Drive but want to put in standard 2.5″ and I need the cable on your pictures.

@Thomas F
Just realised I hadn’t reviewed this link since purchasing the bigger SSD. Just tried to replace it and it’s correct the ribbon and the caddy are completely different to a std SSD. Only to find out after I had stripped the Vaio down and now frantically looking for answers on the http://www….
I have written a complaint to Sony and asked them (politely) to ship a standard ribbon/caddy to me within the next 14days otherwise I’m off to speak to Trading Standards regarding them restricting my upgrade rights (if that’s a case, hopefully similar to Human Rights!>!!??)
Damn…….

So took apart my vpcsa and noticed it has a pciexpress slot.put in a msata ssd of 128b but in the OS it doesn’t detect the ssd put in. Amy clues as to what I need to do to get it to be detected? Or has the pcie been disabled in this model? Already got my ssd running in place of the old hdd

Sorry not a PCIe but a mSATA slot. Not too hard to get to. Bur I can see pretty big potential with running a SSD/HDD and a mSATA. It was not detected in the BIOS and it was not detected in the OS.
I’m going to try and update the BIOS (granted I am now running W8.1, although that should have minimal if any impact since it would be at the BIOS level were trying to get things to work.

I want to leave some more information for anyone who is attempting this, as this page is high in Google results for replacing a HDD in a VPCSA.

My laptop model was VPCSA4C5E – the SSD that came with it (128GB Toshiba) was a micro SATA (μSATA), *not* mini Sata (mSata). The SATA cable was V030_MP_SSD_1CH1CONN_FPC-240 which works with μSATA. Therefore if you are looking to buy a SSD and have this model and cable, then look for a μSATA HDD/SSD, or, if you buy a normal SATA or mSATA drive, then you will need to buy a new appropriate cable as well.

Hi all, I can validate what Anon and Dutch Guy are reporting. My version of the VPCSA likewise came with the upgraded μSATA HDD/SSD configuration, which has an unusual V030_MP_SSD_1CH1CONN_FPC-240 connector.

This meant that when I opened up the notebook expecting to find the typical hddbay and sata connector I’ve seen on my every other notebook I’ve serviced, I was instead greeted by a shallower drive bay bay, bare μSATA SSD board, and V030_MP ribbon cable connector that wouldn’t attach to or support a standard sized 2.5″ laptop hdd/sdd form factor.

I’m having a heck of a time finding a larger capacity μSATA ssd replacement, but at least I now know what to look for thank to Anon and Dutch Guy. I guess the only alternative to shopping for another μSATA ssd: does anyone know hwo to swap the V030_MP_SSD_1CH1CONN_FPC-240 connector fo ra standard laptop sata connector to support a normal ssd form factor? Thanks all

I bought a Crucial 1 TB SATA SSD thinking (because their Advisor Tool and System Scanner said so) that it would be a plug and play upgrade from the existing SSD. Turns out my particular Sony Vaio VPCSA 290X was shipped with a micro SATA SSD so the caddy and ribbon connector were incompatible, and my initial reaction was to return the drive and search for another solution.

But after a lot of research I decided to buy a SATA ribbon (FPC-239 if you are interested) and 2.5-in caddy (thank you eBay!) and am glad to report that after following the (included Acronis) cloning instructions it became plug and play and fired up perfectly on its first try.